Japanese Pop Star Comes Out as Gay
Shinjiro Atae makes an announcement about his sexual orientation in a rare move for the conservative country.
“I’m a gay man.”
It’s a rare announcement for a man in conservative Japan.
And it’s even rarer for a big performer whose livelihood depends on fans and sponsors — and who’s famous for lyrics like “Pretty girl, I still adore you.”
On Wednesday night, 2,000 fans gathered in Central Tokyo to hear J-pop idol Shinjiro Atae, who has been on hiatus for nearly two years, discuss “the challenge of my life.”
“I respect you and believe you deserve to hear this directly from me,” he said, reading from a prepared letter as he stood onstage in a dark auditorium. “For years, I struggled to accept a part of myself.”
“But now, after all I have been through, I finally have the courage to open up to you about something. I am a gay man.”
He added that he doesn’t want people coming to terms with their sexual orientation “to struggle like me.”
After a few moments of silence, attendees shrieked, applauded, wept, and declared their love for Atae, who said he wants his fans to know his true self.
Before embarking on a solo career, Atae danced with the Japanese pop group AAA for two decades — starting when he was just 14. For years he knew he was gay — but “I thought if I was found out, it would end my career,” he told The New York Times. “And so I couldn’t tell anyone.”
What made him ultimately decide to dance out of the closet was living in Los Angeles for seven years, building a support system, and seeing openly gay couples, living their lives unashamedly, in public.
“People would talk about their vulnerabilities,” he said. “In Japan, people think it’s best not to talk about those things.”
Japan is the only G7 country where same-sex unions are not legal, and that lacks significant nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people and families. Some government officials have been outspoken about their anti-LGBTQ animus, with an aide to the country’s prime minister making disparaging remarks about same-sex couples and speculating that Japanese citizens would flee their home country if such couples were allowed to wed.
“I think [Atae] has decided to come out in order to change Japan,” Gon Matsunaka, a director and adviser to Pride House Tokyo, a gay and trans support center, told the Times.
“Japanese society is not a place where people strictly state their sexuality,” added Satoshi Masuda, a researcher of Japanese popular music. LGBTQ performers often do not explicitly discuss their sexuality, he added, “Rather, it naturally comes to be known.”
When Atae discovered hip-hop (after being forced by his mother to play baseball growing up), he worried that a gossip magazine would find out he was gay. And when he moved to Los Angeles in 2016 and began frequenting LGBTQ-friendly neighborhoods, he worried that Japanese tourists and expats who saw him would leak a photo of him.
He also worried when he came out to his family, telling his mother Suzuko first. “It was the most nervous I have ever been in coming out,” he said of the experience.
His mother worried that he would be attacked online, but is now “200 percent supportive” of his decision to go public.
This decision, Atae said, was not political, but instead intended to “normalize” being gay. He also knew it might elicit criticism.
“Whatever you do, there will be haters,” he said. “I can only focus on the people I might be helping.”
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